A Vincentian entrepreneur has complained to Asbert News Network, “my life is not my own so anytime now I could lose my life.”
He claims he now lives in fear for his life after being shot in his leg by a trio, who, according to him was led by a recently appointed Senator in the local House of Parliament.
The man, a block maker, trucker and farmer, alleges that this prominent Member of Parliament, and crew, turned up in his yard on April 13, sometime after he’d exchanged harsh words with his apparently estranged wife.
According to Mr. Block Maker, his wife, who lives a few houses away since a 2020 New Year’s Eve police-involved domestic dispute, virtually disappeared down a rabbit-hole of volunteerism in the immediate aftermath of the April 9 volcanic eruptions.
“After the volcano blow, that was the Friday. The Saturday my wife come and tell me de Senator tell she they going to visit the shelter at Brighton School, Diamond Deliverance Assembly and the Apostolic Church.
“I said to her, ‘ok, is no problem, yo could go.’ She leave and then she went. Sunday again… she went to visit the shelter so [later] in the night I called my wife and asked she where she is?
“That was around 8 o’clock in the night… she said she coming home just now. I said, ‘if you visiting shelter, shelter is not in the night… any how come home now because volcano now blow; everybody home wid them family. If anything and yo have to run, yo could run wid yo whole family. Come home now.”
Mrs. Block Maker eventually got home “to meet the children and dem,” sometime around 8:30, her non-fatally wounded husband told ANN.
Tensions began to rise sometime on Sunday afternoon when Mrs. Block Maker told Mr. Block Maker her plans for the evening.
“I told her, ‘Nicole … I hear the Prime Minister when he say he going to visit shelter, he leaving in the day. He not leaving in the night to visit shelter – around 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock, 1 o’clock. That’s the time I heard him saying he going to visit shelter.
“If you going to visit shelter, you can’t expect to go visit shelter in the night when people done start to tuck in themselves and get themselves in them corner together to get them night rest.
“That is not the appropriate time to go shelter. So she go Sunday evening about 5 o’clock and she came back about 7:30 that evening.
“I said, ‘we have work to do. Yo can’t be going around all the time; yo not getting pay. We have a small business running so tomorrow … ah need yo assistance.’
“She say, nah today.’ Me say, ‘OK!’”
Mr. Block Maker said on Tuesday morning he again invited his wife to get the corn, a fraction of their micro enterprise, planted and weeded as was previously planned but she again opted to go collect some bottled water with the Senator in question.
That Tuesday afternoon tensions broke when Nicole did not turn up at 1 o’clock as agreed. By 3 o’clock, “I leave a message pon she phone I say, ‘Nicole, Nicole you not answering your phone you don’t know what I am calling you for but yo still not answering yo phone.
“Two minutes after she call me back and ask me what I was calling she fah and then she say she leave the phone in the bag, in the car.
“Ah say yo getting me vex. Yo war demons stir up in me today and I began to use some words, vexation words to her. She said, ‘yo don’t have to go down that road.’”
A sentiment to which Mr. Block Maker retorted, “why yo acting as a silly wife? ‘Lowing people to come into yo home an mash up yo life. Why yo don’t act as a sensible woman?”
According to him, his rhetorical line of questioning elicited another commitment from Mrs. Block Maker that she was “coming home now.” Half hour later and she was supposedly, “like 2 [or] 300 feet above me coming down across Thomas Apartments deh.”
Convinced that he was being lied to, Mr. Blocker told us, “I come home … when it reach like about an hour and ah half, I saw her come down. The car come down with her and them leave she out and she go up in de yard.”
The sight of his allegedly delinquent wife, infuriated Mr. Block Maker; so much so, “I deh in here and I quarrelling and quarrelling and I saying, ‘imagine that; you disrespecting me as your husband.
“Me and you deh for 26 years and somebody you don’t know – you don’t even have 10 encounter wid dem – you prefer to listen to them than to listen to me.”
Mr. Block Maker said he’d just taken a water break from his tirade and was heading back onto his porch to cool out when he wasy accosted by three persons, one of whom he recognized, heading to the rear of his property. The lone female was easily identifiable, Mr. Block Maker further alleged.
“The taller of the two guys said to me, ‘Mr. John.’ I say, ‘good evening sah.’ Then he come up in the porch and he say, ‘yo want to kill de senator?’ I said, ‘what yo talking about?’
“‘Yo want to kill de senator?’ I said, ‘all I said: I want you to leave my family alone. I am an old man. I need my wife to assist me in my business yo is a single human. Leave my wife! Go and get another single human to go ‘round with. My wife is a married woman and I need her to assist me.”
It was at that point that the initial attack on Mr. Block Maker’s person ensued. “the taller guy… run off from where he was and stamp – kick me off de blocks. Kick me on the ground.
“The shorter one was behind me back, while I was talking he tap me on me shoulder and say relax – so the other one kick me off the blocks and stamp me up, stamp me on de ground. All in me belly, me ribs, me foot, me neck until ah defecate meself – mess meself up when he stamp me in me belly.
“Then the shorter one say to the taller one, ‘man yo don’t have to do that. It ain’t call foo all ah that.’”
Mr. Blocker told ANN that the tussle to deescalate the situation was short lived as Tall Man “pull a gun from his waist and crank the gun and pull me foot – ah was lying flat on me back – an hold the gun over me foot and shoot me in me foot.
“Then the shorter one strewps his teeth, then leave the yard. Then the… senator s\he point ah gun in my face and tell me if I call him/her f-ing name s/he would shoot me in my mouth.”
But Mr. Block Maker is unyielding: “I did not call him/her name.”
The wounded man was later rushed to the hospital after his indignant yells brought out the neighborhood. At this point all three assailants had gone their way.
When we spoke to Mrs. Blocker she insisted that she could not make any comments because she did not see anything. She leveled some accusations of her own, though. She claimed that Mr. Block Maker threatened her life as recently as the day he was shot.
“He threaten to chop of me neck – he tell yo dat?”
His relatives have allegedly also joined in since Mr. Block Maker was shot. “He claim to say I was the one who sent the gunman for him but I would never do that. That’s my children father. I will never do that. Never in history no matter what he is to me.”
We were unable to reach the Senator in question.
Meanwhile Mr. Blocker is adamant that he should be compensated for his injuries and the resultant loss of income that the gunshot wound is costing him. Even as he demanded justice, the self-proclaimed churchgoing Christian also admitted he’d prefer to have this potentially fatal rift “resolved in a civilized way.”
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